*This review is a statement against recent Total War titles marketing scheme*

This recommendation will stay negative unless Creative Assembly and Sega demonstrate to Total war fans that future Total War games will not be plagued by abusive and overpriced downloadable content (as is The Viking Forefathers ''Culture pack'', and the Longbeards ''Culture Pack'' in Attila - same with culture DLCs in this game. We have to pay to unlock an excisting file).

Sega and Creative Assembly, show some respect to Total War fans.

We have paid for a complete game. Could you do us the honor of delivering one?

Though it had been greetly improved over the years, I just can't recommand that game and the DLC's.The only thing that save it are the modders who add tons of units and things.Because yes, without any mod, every nations have quite the same units. And you won't have that much choice as there is not enough units in each nations.Also, I've been very disappointed with the maps. Seriously, every maps look like the same and ALL of them are just empty. Oh yeah, sometimes you'll have some trees. Nothing else.

I don't recommand that game, Shogun is a lot more better than this one. Or, just wait for the next Total War.I hope my comment helped !

Tl;DR: Immersion due to the beautiful graphics and getting the hang of province/army management will keep you well entertained for 100-200 hours, longer if you care for the single battles more than the overall challenge of the campaign.

Full review:I have played the TW series since Medieval Total War (1). The game is an expected continuation of the series, in both good and bad ways as well as the general direction of what the game is about.

Good ways: Every sequel since MTW (1) added new features of the game, better graphics, more units, more awe at how beautiful it is. Bad ways: Only every other sequel makes for a truly challenging game (but never as much as the first ones), because the AI development just can't keep up with the increased depth. And the long waiting times after ending turns and loading battles can make games tedious.General direction: For winning a campaign, the importance of battles and managing them yourself declines, while the importance of province management increases.

In MTW (1), there was very rudimentary play on the abstract, gameboard-like campaign map.In Rome 1, that map became meaningful, with moving armies instead of game-pieces. You could use the terrain, build forts, lay sieges. Unfortunately, the AI did not do any of those, so you had a huge advantage even before a battle began.In MTW 2, harder units and bigger armies made the game challenging again, at least until the middle-phase. You could get big, meaningful battles - sometimes.Empire: Total War was the worst part of the series. Naval warfare was introduced and it could have been beautiful if it wasn't for the impotent campaign AI that didn't even manage to assemble fleets. The campaign was just an exercise in building construction and you rarely even had an own town attacked. The expansion N:TW is not worth mentioning.Shogun 2 was a good game again, finally challenging, and beautifully done.

Rome 2 seems to be mostly about managing provinces and moving around armies. I have played the campaigns Rome, Athens (Wrath of Sparta) and now Markomannia (Augustus). Playing battles actually seems to have become optional and you only do it because it's Total War and you want to see your units in action sometimes. But most of the time, the prediction for the outcome is very precise, and it's rarely so that you won't clearly win or lose, so there is little motivation in it. As usual in Total War, about 90% of the time of the campaign is when you already know you will win. Playing through is to complete it, and to maybe see some battles with high-end units.

Here's the twist, though: That sounds rather bad, but surprisingly, it isn't. Even after 10 years of playing the game, I still can play whole campaigns purely for the joy of occasionally playing a battle just to see the army I have lead for many turns triumph or lose, even if it means nothing for the campaign. They just get the immersion element of the game right, and I guess that's the beauty of TW. :)

I actually like this game but since the game is a platform for making more money to play existing content. I get a little annoyed. So If you can get it gifted or very cheap go for it, otherwise don't give these "profit at the expense of the game" any of your time

Now finally after many months and many patches I can safely recommend that Total War: Rome II is a game worth buying. It is a shame the game wasn't released at the standard it is at now, but that is in the past. Now you get to enjoy a good Total War series title without all the game breaking bugs and pants on head ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI.

rome 2 is a great game to play with friends or alone it has an in depth campaign no matter what faction you are also the graphics are fantastic it did have a bad launch but they where fixed and for them to give us a free upgrade to emperor edition is really good of the devs it also includes a campaign addon with the upgrade over all the game is amazing and definantly worth buying